Havok Across the Galaxy

At a Glance

Player Counts: All, Maintains Greater Control in solo, but develops quickly enough in multiplayer to lend resources to others.

Play style: Voltron/Combo

Strengths: Very consistent setup, amazing economy and quick scaling, versatile game play, easy to repair boards.

Weaknesses: Struggles against Big Minions in the early game, hard ally hate, and double-tappping activations before setup.

"You realize this is pretty farfetched, don't you?" - Havok, X-Factor volume 186.

A Long Time Ago...

Hello everyone! Figured I'd push one more old deck before the excitement of NeXt takes us all over. We'll now take a look at an often forgotten ally before they're completely forgotten in the NeXt wave, in the form of Havok!

Now, I actually shared a Havok list a while ago with Spider-Woman that I actually pushed to a lot of success. While fun and competent, that deck was surviving in the high difficulty environment of Standard II/Expert II by the good graces of Spider-Woman and Global Logistics. I'm happy to report things are different now! Havok is more than a cute piece of scaling here and has some legitimate value to contribute!

Cry Combo

Now the original reason for thinking Havok even had a place in a Nebula deck was Wide Stance. A powerful card in its own right, especially considering the encounter control the special gives. Letting us order the top of the deck means we can actually have Havok (or Cosmo) throw away cards we don't want to see as well. This might seem like a hindrance in Solo since we aren't choosing are encounter cards (not something you can really do at any of the higher player counts with Wide Stance), but there's nothing stopping you from holding our allies activations if we can set up a soft turn for ourselves. Pretty frequently when looking at only 3 cards though we'll see no cards we particularly want to face as an encounter, and we'll be happy to just settle for a light boost on top then and run the others out with our allies. It also happens pretty frequently the Villain will be stunned or confused when we setup the deck, so choosing an encounter card also still works here.

The Dogs of War

Besides this unique hook, you are playing a super solid and consistent ally-Voltron strat. We got 3 great traditional value targets in Havok, Cosmo, and the no-nonsense Yondu, and a really good alternate target in Rocket. Even Gamora is often worth it to throw an Upgrade on since she'll use all three activations so frequently (we'll get back to that).

Furry and Professor X are good chump blockers to slide next to our more faithful allies, giving us cycling and and a Confuse, and are very affordable with the economy we have.

War Monger

We now talk about the often praised, but in my opinion STILL overlooked strength of Nebula, and that is her massive economy/ funding for this campaign. Her AE ability and ship are the obvious looks for that image, but her frequent visits to Alter-Ego shouldn't be overlooked either for netting a card each trip. Knowhere latches onto this, and even the ally limit boost is quite relevant with how many sticky bodies we play. Helicarrier and Mansion are also just better here when we look at so many more cards that they hit the board sooner. Our double resources paired with the potent "Welcome Aboard" also makes filling the board easy despite seeing only one two-cost ally, and we'll often be able to develop them the turn they come down.

Endurance is a pretty common-sense include for Nebula with her low health, but she actually holds her own pretty well with status, defends, frequent AE trips, both ends of wide stance, having good dedicated chumps and consistent emergency chumps. I've actually found endurance most useful in comfortably letting Nebula stay in hero to resolve Techniques I really want to next turn. Keeping it in as a safety blanket alone probably isn't bad in its own right.

And Med Lab, what a card (shout outs to Journeyman for convincing me on it for this list). Surprised that at the time of this writing still no one had used it in Nebula. You can find recursion in plenty of other places in Leadership sure, but having something you always have on deck and cheapen allies by an effective resource per play (even at the cost of a ready) is pretty valuable. Nebula's Gamora ally actually plays off it well since you resolve the effect in AE, meaning you get to choose to resolve the specials of any techniques you'd play the turn she went in there, and any you play in AE the turn she'd come back in. Rocket is also an ally you want to probably use either basic power for each turn, and getting him out cheaper later leaves you with few regrets. It's a nice buffer as well with early Cosmos we risk activations on to fix-clear annoying problems.

Havok works out well as a frequent Patient. One of the things I was happy about with this list compared to the Spider-Woman one was how much more Havok came out bursting damage. In that list he was more of another piece of scaled development on the board that we could keep out with tearing off lighter boost pips found by Global Logistics. But here I'm comfortable pushing damage or even setting up bursts with Wide Stance knowing he'll be taken care of in the Med Lab.

The ally upgrades may look like a weird set of choices and ratios, and you can probably tweak them to your wants and needs, but this is the set that lined up well with my usual play pattern. 3x Inspired is preferred for it being generic and +1THW generally being more valuable than ranged or overkill on any ally that isn't named Yondu. The third sidearm just lost it's spot to so many other good contenders from the supports, allies, and such. It works out well that usually we cap out at two primary Voltron allies on board, and sits with any of our targets. Laser Blaster comes in as a Good capstone to are mainstay Voltron targets, which is primarily Yondu and occasionally Cosmo. Getting them up to 4-ATK and everything we can want on an attack is great, but being Guardian locked is actually relevant with Havok being an ally we are always pulling in and out of Med-Lab. You can probably still find room for another one of these with a cut, or if you retool the deck for a pure Guardians strat.

War Games

Your mulligan is a pretty standard chase for scaling, and primarily resource generators. Don't be afraid to throw away ally upgrades or easier ways to play them like Power of Leadership and Welcome Aboard, you have enough of that to spare in the deck that you can focus on pieces that will stick around first. Allies are also fine, but your high number of targets for upgrades means you don't need to make the rest of your hand suffer to get one out turn one, you'll draw into more.

Techniques can be really high value early on but are also redundant. Don't fret over keeping your favorite or a couple that solve pertinent issues, but also don't let them get in the way of setup. Almost always a good idea to keep one obviously because of Nebula's AE. Ones with status effects will generally be really high value, but your Attack and Thwart techniques should be prioritized when the scenario introduces those problems right away. At higher player counts Cut Throat can get full value much easier going into turn two, so that's something to consider. Wide Stance is good at taking out gas from the Villian in solo and still has a lot of value in two player, but you probably want to mulligan it for more answers if the scenario starts with problems.

Combat Ready is probably the most tactical card in her kit after the mulligan, you'll have to make in the moment evaluations depending on what the encounter starts like and what you pitched/drew to decide whether you should play it or not. I would never keep it before the mulligan though.

Speaking of Combat Ready, in game you'll generally want to focus on those status cards. Wide Stance is nice but the combo can be pretty win more if you set up enough, and is less impactful in multi. It's a good win more though since you can choose to do it when the situation enables it, and a combo or an easy turn setup by Wide Stance are good ways to facilitate that. Otherwise I'm going for Cut Throat since our damage is already scaled well with our allies. Don't worry about shuffling Weapons Master unless minions are a known issue.

Post-Mulligan we're developing our allies. Thread in Techniques when you can because of their generally really high value. Nebula's 2/2/2 stats is really good at fixing problems that show up. Defending can obviously be good when we are not chump blocking as much, but don't be afraid to risk more health and be willing to flip down to use your stats and clear early problems. When using the special on Wide Stance multiple times a turn (Lethal Intent and Gamora being ways this can happen) make sure to use your combo allies in between those usages so that you still get some beneficial encounter control from the second special. One of the hidden strengths of this deck is managing "swings" with big technique resolutions, so smoothing things over with Nebula and your allies doesn't stall out much as much as you'd expected with high development boards.

Considerations

There were several cards that were cut and swapped in this list through testing, and definitely are worth considering depending on match-ups, team comps, and preferences. Pixie was the one I was most excited about and was sure it would have a use in the list. Originally as a Havok fetcher that could also grab Professor X, Med Lab proved good enough at keeping Havoc a consistent tool available. Even though looping Pixie with Med Lab and looping Professor X with Pixie was manageable with our economy, it felt like it left the deck spinning its wheels a lot, and we had to abandon things often to actually progress the game, which also combined with the status techniques feeling more dead with the frequent status and chump blocking being used. I would recommend putting her in though for strategies that particularly like Confusing, such as Magog.

Clarity was often played and rarely used with how much our economy developed otherwise. Additionally it also threatened the careful balance of health sustain this deck has before Endurance hits the table. Maybe you can put it in against villains that give you lots of breathing room, but the card still feels win more here. Martinex was just short of a lot of allies just being better for different niches, with 2-Cost being it's only really selling point, which was less attractive with the high costs we can afford. Groot is pretty awkward with how much we want to push our allies to activate and how crowded the board already ends up being in the mid to end game. Certain minion comps in the encounter or teammate strats maybe can motivate you to add this in. The Adam Warlock ally also is someone I really want to home in a Med Lab deck one day, but he was surprisingly awkward to setup early on, needing specific cards left to get the affect we want, and possibly eating held pieces of setup.

Lockjaw may seem tempting with how heavy our economy ends up, but you basically never want to play him early on, and when we get those heavy resource hands later on you are probably winning anyway by that point. Maybe bring him in if the encounter can really activation bully you in the late game and you want emergency chumps that don't have 2-3 upgrades on them. The biggest tragedy is that if he was in the list than "The Dogs of War" would be featured in many more puns. Guardians of the Galaxy obviously doesn't work with our mascot Havoc, but if you want to make a traditional guardians Leadership deck with some of the other mentioned alternative allies, doing that with Med Lab will definitely set you up for success.

That wraps up most everything I had to say. Thank you if you read this far in! Nebula doesn't always grab my attention (not a unpopular sentiment I know) but I am happy to have a deck that capitalizes on her powerful tools and she also makes her own. Plus, we got Havok back in a list, heck yeah! This deck will be a nice final taste of Voltron strats before the next wave brings its massive amount of allies that seem like potential interesting pieces in the archetype. Happy gaming everyone!